Electronic documents such as web pages, emails and instant messages often contain links that can be used to navigate to other documents, such as web pages.
Such links frequently go to a location unintended by the user, such as a phishing site. In many cases, such as in the case of “phishing” messages or web sites hosting malicious content (either intentionally or inadvertently), such a location may be associated with malicious document, which can cause harm such as installation of malicious software or theft of personal information.
Present technologies for preventing phishing include interception of a phishing message, prevention of site spoofing, or detection of navigation to a malicious site. However, no current filter is effective against all phishing messages, sites can be spoofed despite the current countermeasures, and detection of malicious site navigation is error-prone. Moreover, users tend to ignore confirmation screens and automatically approve most actions that are called to their attention.
It would be useful to be able to ensure that traversal of a link resulted in navigation to an intended location.